2017 urban fantasy, first of its series. Dr Greta Helsing is a doctor
to monsters: vampires, ghouls, mummies, and stranger things. And now a
sect of murderous monks is attacking them all…
Which is a great premise… well, no, it's two great premises,
and that's the problem. A story about a heroine being part of a team
hunting down a threat in Hidden Supernatural World? It's been done,
often, and sometimes very well, and a big part of that side of the
plot is basically procedural Polyfilla, completely standard
investigations and reverses. A story about a doctor to people with
strange physiology, some of whom aren't alive? That's interesting
and when Greta actually gets to do some doctoring the book comes
alive. Alas, most of the time she's just hanging around with her
supernatural buddies, each of whom is more powerful than her, each of
whom is a bit in love with her.
Because of that "more powerful" bit she ends up being quite reactive,
and is left behind when the men go on their raid. (Yes, she ends up
coming along by a different route and Saving the Day, but that's by
coincidence, nothing to do with her choices.) I also got a feeling of
Kim Newman-esque aren't-I-clever spot-the-reference when it turned out
two of Greta's coterie proved to be Lord
Ruthven and
Sir Francis
Varney, though I
can't draw a connection between
Fastitocalon here (who
"used to be a demon") and mythic referents of that name.
There are logical errors (if the "Rosary killer" preying on humans is
meant also to be the monks, as is hypothesised once and assumed to be
correct thereafter, why are their patterns completely different?), and
Greta fails to tell her co-workers about the threat to all of them for
no apparent reason except so that she can feel bad when one of them
gets attacked. Everything gets resolved by deus ex machina rather
than by anything Greta, or even anyone else, does.
There are some lovely moments here, like Ruthven having learned to
make latté art because he was bored and had time to practice, or the
Devil's taste in cigarettes, but it ends up feeling like too much rich
sauce over scraggy meat.
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